We live on Toronto Island and had two floods in 3 years. Our community of 650 residents (average age 63) had to bag 50 dump trucks of sand to build about 20,000 sandbags.
We needed sandbag walls as highlighted above.
We evolved an efficient way to create sandbags. The video below shows it in action. The process is detailed below.
The Toronto Island Sandbagging Process
After two years of practice and input from nearly everyone involved, we refined our process to its most efficient form. The design was a collaborative effort—this document simply captures the process as detailed in the diagram below.
For a clearer view, use the “Open image in new tab” option to access the full-size image, which prints well on an 11″ x 17″ sheet. We laminated our printouts and brought them to the worksite for reference.
We were bagging so quickly that we kept running out of bags and sand! In the video above, you’ll notice the team adjusting the cone ladder to bring it closer to the sand pile. It’s crucial to actively manage the supply of sand and bags well before they’re needed—otherwise, the crew will be stop working (and some will wander off…).
Below is the design of the “Cone Ladder” that is used for the bagging. The cone ladder would need to be built in advance. It takes a little trial and error to get the size and height of the cones just right. This design worked well for us.
Various Worksheets and Calculation Examples
Below are some example calculations and worksheets used..
There are some other good resources for sandbagging such as the following, but I have not done an exhaustive search. If you add a comment with additional good resources that provide additional information and I will add it to the below:
https://www.albertasandbags.ca/pages/13735985
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We use groups.io for discussion and support. You can join by going to groups.io and joining group “Sandbagging”, or following this link: https://www.groups.io/g/Sandbagging
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Brilliant! Thanks for the writeup.